SAO: Playing the Game
by HammerDropper
Summary: The events of SAO are told through the journals of a 16 year old boy named James. The journals do not have a lot of detail, but we will be questioning him on more details later, these details are allowed to be seen by everyone.


November 6th, 2022

Sword Art Online: Day One

My name is James, well in this world I'm Das Hammer, don't ask about the name it's just a dumb nickname that grew on me, and I'm 16 years old. I'm a normal 16 year old that goes to school and occasionally plays video games with my friends. When we heard about Sword Art Online we were super siked for it. All of us got jobs to help support each other to make sure we could play this with all of us. We waited all night to buy it and we logged in right away.

It was beautiful, The Starting City was the greatest sight I've seen in all my years of life, and yeah sure I may be only 16, but I know when something is great. The game allowed me to pick my starting weapon, and of course I picked the light hammer. As soon as I was done looking at the amazing buildings around me, I searched for my friends. It didn't take long to find them, I just looked them up on the player log under their usernames, LokiMeld, Sopic, Calval, and Fredor. We partied up and headed out to try out the game play mechanics. All I have to say is that I mastered, well not the skill, my light hammer. We killed a lot of boars near the outskirts of the town. We saw all of the other players testing out their skills too, most understood quickly, but there was this one guy in red that needed a lot of help, but his friend helped him out, the red guy's friend looked like he knew what he was doing, I thought he was a beta tester by the way he laughed at his friend fighting a boar.

What happened next was the worst thing to ever happen.

We were transported to the Starting City, and questioned about it, we didn't want to come back so soon. Everyone looked worried as a red goop coming from the sky. It formed into a hooded man that introduced himself as the creator of the game. He told us that this was his world and that it was to be treated like life. We can't log out, and he said that if we were to experience death in the game, we would die in the real world. Sopic yelled out in protest when this was said. The man disappeared, but not before turning us into our real selves.

I now looked liked me, a 5'9", 175 lbs, brown short hair, and white skin. I looked around at my friends as they transformed into their real life bodies as well. Everyone went into a panic. All I did after the news was run, I didn't know where I was running, but I needed to get away from everyone. I ran into the red man as he was running back to the square. He introduced himself as Klein and he told me about his friends, and then I remembered about my own. I ran back to where I left my friends and grabbed them quickly, we agreed that we weren't going to do anything dumb and play smart, so we headed towards the nearest inn.

On our way there I saw a girl on her knees staring at the ground, she was the only one not moving. I couldn't leave her there by herself so I told my friends to go on to the inn and that I'd meet up with them later, they told me not to try anything creepy. I walked over to her and knelt down beside her and tried to talk to her. She was very pretty, looked about my age, her hair was either black or brown, I can't tell with my color blindness. She said she didn't want to move, but I insisted we at least move to a bench, she agreed and we moved to the nearest one. I told her that it was okay to be sad about the situation, but not to let it get to her, I honestly had no idea if what I was telling her was even the right thing to say, but it seemed right. She told me her name was Lisbeth, or just Liz. She also said that she came close to dying, but ran away from the wolf she was fighting because she got scared, she laughed while she said this. We talked for a few more minutes and she accepted my friend request. I asked her if she wanted to join me and my friends at the inn, and she agreed, but she didn't have any currency to pay for a room, so I gave her mine. She's sleeping right now and my friends are too. I don't plan on writing in my journal everyday, but I just want to keep a record of events that happen to me for my friends and family.

James, signing off.


End file.
